Experts: 300,000 distracted driving crashes already this year

Sunday

Apr 24, 2011 at 12:01 AM

Following widespread publicity about the hazards of distracted driving, medical groups are working hard to make patients more aware of the problem.

By Jane BrodyColumnist

While driving a car, have you ever:Reprogrammed your GPS device?Retrieved something you or a child dropped?Searched for a CD?Put on makeup or shaved?Struggled to open a package of nuts or chips?Perhaps you never have texted or talked on a cell phone while operating a motor vehicle. But if you engaged in any of the above activities, you are just as guilty of distracted driving as if you had.It's easy to become complacent. Maybe you're a good driver, and you've gotten away with such actions for years. Maybe you managed to avert a near-accident when your attention returned to the road in the nick of time. But one of these days, your luck may run out and you, or someone you hit, could be maimed for life or dead."Driving while distracted is roughly equivalent to driving drunk," Dr. Amy N. Ship, an internist at Harvard Medical School, wrote last year in The New England Journal of Medicine. "Any activity that distracts a driver visually or cognitively increases the risk of an accident. None of them is safe."Following widespread publicity about the hazards of distracted driving, including a Pulitzer-prize winning series in this newspaper, medical groups are working hard to make patients more aware of the problem. The most recent effort was started last week by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Orthopaedic Trauma Association, whose "Decide to Drive" campaign calls attention to the increasing number of distractions engaged in by multitasking drivers and the resulting toll on people's lives."We take care of a lot of people injured in car accidents, and distracted driving is a substantial contributor to these accidents," Dr. Daniel Berry, president of the academy, said in an interview. "If we could get rid of this part of our practice, it would be a great service to the people we care for."Orthopedists would do very well, thank you, without the business generated by the 307,369 crashes that have occurred so far this year, according to estimates from the National Safety Council, involving drivers talking on cell phones or texting.Last year Aaron Brookens of Beloit, Wis., then 19, was driving home at 75 miles per hour after spending a weekend with his girlfriend when he decided to send her a text message — and wound up pinned under a semi. The toll: two broken femurs, a broken kneecap and ankle, nerve damage to both legs, and a lacerated spleen, kidney and liver.Numerous operations and a lengthy rehab later, Brookens knows he's lucky to be alive. "No one thinks it will happen to them," he said at a news conference convened by the orthopedists. He now realizes that "deciding to drive" is always the best option, and he wants others to learn from his mistake."We don't expect our campaign to change everyone's behavior overnight," Berry said. "It took a lot of years to get the message across about using seat belts or driving drunk. We're adding our voice to those of others — the more jungle drums, the better."Among those beating the drums are the parents of Eric Okerblom, a 19-year-old college student who was struck by a car and killed in 2009 while cycling near his home in Santa Maria, Calif.; the driver, a teenager, was traveling 60 mph while texting on her cell phone. His father, Bob Okerblom, is now on a cross-country bike ride, blogging along the way in order to spread the word about distracted driving.Last November, the transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, introduced a website called "Faces of Distracted Driving" (distraction.gov/faces) that explores the cost these behaviors inflict on families and communities. "Distracted driving has become a deadly epidemic on America's roads," said LaHood, who urges bans on drivers texting and using phones or other devices.At the news briefing, Dr. Andrew Pollak, president of the trauma association, said: "It isn't just cell phones. It's anything that takes our attention from the task of driving."David L. Strickland, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, added: "No one does multitasking well."The orthopedists' campaign will try to raise the national consciousness and change future driving behavior by taking their message to schoolchildren, especially those in grades 5 through 8, who may discourage their parents and siblings from driving distracted and refrain themselves when they become drivers.Statistics and studiesThe National Safety Council estimates that at least 1.6 million crashes — 28 percent of the total — are caused each year by drivers using cellphones or texting. Sometimes those crashes are deadly. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that in 2008, approximately one in six fatal vehicle collisions resulted from a driver being distracted.Yet, when drivers who had an accident or near-accident due to distracted driving were asked, many said they would repeat the hazardous behavior.Ship questioned whether talking on the phone is "really any more dangerous than putting on mascara, shaving or reading a map while driving — all things we've seen drivers do." She wrote that although cellphone use is far more widespread than these other activities, "none of them is safe."Laws banning the use of handheld cell phones and texting while driving have proliferated around the country in recent years, but no jurisdiction has managed to ban hands-free calls, which studies have indicated may be nearly as hazardous.University of Utah researchers have shown in studies that conversations on hands-free phones are just as distracting as those on handheld ones. They called the problem one of "inattention blindness.""Just the act of being on the phone, focusing on the conversation, distracts you from the task at hand — driving," said Berry, a professor of orthopedics at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn. "Your mind is somewhere else. It's not in the car. You're driving mechanically but not seeing things the same way. It's different from conversing with someone in the car."A safer approachIn introducing the public service announcements to accompany the campaign, Chuck Husak of the August Lang Husak advertising agency in Bethesda, Md., said, "When you're behind the wheel, there's no such thing as a small distraction."Berry advised, "If you're going to drive, just drive." Take care of potentially distracting activities before you start the car. Set the GPS device, pour the coffee or open the soda, make necessary calls, write the memo or shopping list. If you can't resist answering your cellphone while driving, turn it off and let it take messages.If you need to make a call, reset the GPS unit, deal with a distressed child or eat a sandwich, pull off the road to do it. The minutes spent being safe could save you countless hours of misery.You can report distracted driving episodes at decidetodrive.org.

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